Mr. Y. Nakajima, the almond-eyed guide of gold-filled teeth, came to the end of his elaborate conversation. He turned from the old servant, leaning on his pruning knife, and spoke to the man who stood waiting outside the wistaria-gate in the Street-of-the-Misty-Valley.

"He say Mr. Philip Ware stay here," he announced, "but house is ownerships of his friend, Mr. Daunt, of America Embassy. He regret sadly that no one are not at home."

Ware reflected. Daunt's house? He lived in the Embassy compound—so they had said at dinner last night. Why should he maintain this native house in another quarter of Tokyo? There came to his mind that hackneyed phrase "the custom of the country," the foreigner's specious justification of the modern "Madame Butterfly." In this interminable city, with its labyrinthine mazes, who could tell what this or that gray roof might shelter? Was this a nook enisled, for pretty Japanese romances "under the rose"? He had loaned it to Phil—they were friends.

Ware struck his stick hard against the hedge. He scarcely knew what thought had entered his mind, so nebulous was it, so indefinable. If he had thought to use this discovery, he knew no way; if it was Daunt's covert, here was Phil in possession.

"Ask him if he has any idea where he is."

The guide translated. The servant was ignobly unacquainted, as yet, with the danna-San's illustrious habits. He arrogantly presumed to suggest that he might augustly be in any one of a hundred esteemed spots.

Ware thought a moment, frowningly. "Tell him I am Ware-San's brother," he said then, "and that I have just arrived in Tokyo. I shall wait in the house till he comes."

The old man bowed profoundly at the statement of the relationship. He spoke at some length to the guide. The latter looked at Ware questioningly but hesitated.

"Well?" asked the other tartly.

"He think better please you wait to the hotel."

Ware struck open the gate with a flare of irritation. "You can go now," he said to the guide, and disdaining the servant, strode along the gravel path to the house entrance.

The old man looked after him with an enigmatic Japanese smile. It was not his fault if the foreigners (the kappa devour them!) ate dead beasts and were all quite mad! He tucked up his kimono, stacked his gardening-tools neatly under the hedge, and betook himself across the street for a smoke and a game of Go with the neighbor's betto.

Under the trailing vine Ware slid back the shoji and entered the house.

As he stood looking at the interior his lip curled. He hated the cheapness and vulgarity to which Phil turned with instinctive liking, and he had long ago come thoroughly to despise his younger brother and to relish the whip-hand which the law, with its guardianship, gave him. The place fitted Phil, from the cigarette odor to the loud photograph in the dragon-frame and the partly open wall-closet with its significant array of bottles. It expressed his idea of "a good time!"

He slid open a shikiri. It showed a room, evidently unused, littered with tools, a dusty table with models of curious wing-like propellers, a small electric dynamo and a steel-lathe. He opened another, and stood looking at the room it disclosed with a faint smile. It was scrupulously clean and orderly, and, in contrast to the outer apartment, had an atmosphere of delicate refinement. On the wall hung a tiny gilt image of Kwan-on and below it on an improvised shelf an incense rod was burning with a clean, pungent odor. At one side was suspended a mosquito-bar of dark green gauze, and across a low stool was laid a kimono, with silver camelias on a mauve ground. He picked this up and looked at it curiously, half conscious of a faint perfume that clung to it.

He shut his teeth. The camelia had always been Barbara's favorite flower!

Meanwhile the girl thus incongruously in his thought had felt a gray shadow across her sunshine. She found her uncle greatly perplexed and troubled. Haru's Bible, found on the Chapel doorstep, had been brought to him that morning. He had sent at once to the Street-of-Prayer-to-the-Gods and the messenger had returned with news of her disappearance. The fact that she had taken clothing with her showed that the flight was a deliberate one.

It pained him to think what the return of the book and the little cross might mean. In his long residence in Japan the bishop had grown accustomed to strange dÉnouements, to flashing revelations of subtle deeps in oriental character. But save for one instance of many years ago—which the sight of Barbara must always recall to him—he had never been more saddened than by to-day's disclosure. What he told her had left Barbara with an uneasy apprehension. She drove away pondering. The anxious speculation blurred the glamour of the afternoon.

The homeward course took her through Aoyama, by unfrequented streets of pleasant, suburban-like gardens and small houses with roofs of fluted tile as softly gray as silk. Here and there a bean-curd peddler droned his cry of "To-o-fu! To-o-fu-u!" and under a spreading kiri tree a blind beggar squatted, playing a flute through his nostrils, while his wife, also blind and with a beady-eyed baby strapped to her back, twanged a samisen beside him. In the road groups of little girls were playing games with much clapping of hands and shouting in shrill voices.

In one of the cross-streets a dozen coolies strode, carrying flaming white banners painted in red idiographs. The last bore a huge papier-machÉ bottle—an advertisement of a popular brand of beer. A brass band of four pieces, discoursing hideously tuneless sounds, led them, and between band and banners stalked a grotesquely clad figure on stilts ten feet tall, the shafts pantalooned so that his legs seemed to have been drawn out like India-rubber. The spidery pedestrian was followed by a score of staring children of all ages and sizes.

Suddenly Barbara rose to her feet in the carriage. She had seen a girl emerge from a small temple and turn into a side street.

"Fast! Drive fast, Taka," she called quickly. "The street to the left!" He obeyed, but a soba-ya had halted his shining copper cart of steaming buckwheat, and momentarily delayed them.

The hastening figure was farther away when they rounded the turning. Barbara clasped her hands together. "It was Haru! It was Haru! I am sure!" she whispered.

The girl slipped through a gateway hung with wistaria. As Barbara sprang to the ground she was hurrying through the garden.

"Haru!" But the flying figure did not seem to hear the call.

Barbara ran quickly after her along the gravel path.

In the house, Austen Ware, standing with the kimono in his hand, had heard the rumble of carriage wheels. He had left the outer shoji open, and through the aperture he saw the slim form hastening toward the doorway. An exclamation broke from his lips. Behind her, just entering the gate, was Barbara!

For a breath he stared. A cool, thriving suspicion—one bred of his anger and humiliation, that shamed his manhood—ran through him. Barbara, there? Was it another rendezvous, then? The fierce, self-dishonoring doubt merged into the mad jealousy that already burned him like a brand.

He dropped the kimono, drew back the shikiri of the unused apartment, and stepped inside.

Swiftly and noiselessly the light partition slipped into place behind him.